Your letter of the 27th. Decr. was received only the day before yesterday. The very best I can do with your case, I will. Send to me just as soon as you can, the affidavit of one of your clerks, showing the number of mails you receive per week; the number you send away per week; the number of pounds weight of mails you handle daily, besides that stopping at your own office; the number of hands, including yourself, you have to constantly employ; and what you pay them; how many hours out of the twentyfour you are obliged to be up and at work; and how much you have to pay annually, besides clerk-hire, for matters connected with the office, which the Govt. does not allow you for. Whether Govt. allows for room-rent, candles, and fuel, I dont know, but if it does not, these will fall in the item last mentioned. If, in this way you can show that your compensation is too small, I think I can get it increased; but the bare fact that you get less than you used to do, will not enable me to get along. We have had one such case, which was sneered out of court. I am really interested for you, & wish you to lose no time in doing as I tell you. Show this letter to Logan, and get him to frame the affidavit---adding any thing that may occur to you or him which I may have forgotten.
Tell Hickox I received his claim, and will do the best with it [I] can; but that I fear I can not get along with it.
I am kept very busy here; and one thing that perplexes me more than most any thing else, are the cases of whigs calling on me to get them appointments to places in the army, from the President. There are two great obstacles in the way which they do not seem to understand---first, the President has no such appointments to give---and secondly, if he had, he could hardly be expected to give